Chapter 13 #2
Goldie examined the machine for a moment, then saw a rubber-coated electrical cord plugged into the generator. The cord ran across the dirt floor, then disappeared through a crack in the wooden wall and went outside.
“Now why would an abandoned mine need a generator?” she asked.
“I’ve no idea,” Father Fitz said. “I’ve never heard of any activity up here since I’ve been in town, but that’s only been a couple of months.”
Goldie looked at the cord again, then turned and clicked off her flashlight. She walked out of the building and moved around to its side.
“What’re you doing?” Father asked, going after her.
“Followin’ the line,” she replied, slipping the flashlight back into her jacket pocket.
“Goldie, this isn’t our property. This isn’t our business.”
“No? Then whose business is it? The sheriff’s? He told me the mine was played out. You just said the mayor told you the mine dried up in the 1880s. So, whose generator is it and what’s goin’ on up here?”
“I don’t know. Probably some renegade prospector hoping to find one more vein of silver. We got the picture we came for, you were in the middle of a confession, and I think we should continue with that while heading back to town.”
“Look,” she said, pointing. “The line goes through a little openin’ in between those railroad ties and straight into the mine. That means…”
Her voice trailed off as she walked over to the wall of wooden boards and railroad ties sealing off the entrance and started to feel around.
“That means what?” he asked.
She pulled on a particular board, but it didn’t budge. Then, she tugged on another. Nothing happened. “That means somebody’s gotten into the mine,” she said, pulling on a railroad tie. “There must be an arrangement of boards or ties that look like they’re solidly sealed, but are actually loose.”
The railroad tie didn’t give way, so she tugged on another, shorter tie that was once used for the push carts.
It moved slightly and squeaked. Pulling again with all her might, four stacked shorter ties suddenly fell away, revealing a small square opening about three feet off the ground.
Goldie jumped back quickly to avoid the tumbling ties and fell on her butt.
Father ran over to her. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she answered.
He helped her to her feet, and she brushed off her backside, taking the flashlight out of her back pocket and peering into the opening.
“Hey, Father, you think you can figure out how to fire up that generator?”
“No. This is a very bad idea,” her companion said.
“C’mon,” she urged. “I can see the wire connects to lights that have been strung up inside. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“There’s a difference between a sense of adventure and common sense,” he advised.
“Okay, then…” she said, raising a leg slightly, bending down, and going through the square opening, “if you won’t help me, I’ll go it alone with my little flashlight.
‘Course, I don’t know how far I have to go, or how long the batteries will last. Without proper lightin’, I might lose my way and fall down a shaft to a horrible death in the middle of a confession without gettin’ absolution.
But that’s okay. You just stay outside where it’s safe and don’t help me.
I’ll let you know what I find, Father. If, y’know, I ever get back. ”
She started walking into the darkness.
“Goldie. I can’t go in there,” he called after her, bending over and peering inside. “I suffer from claustrophobia. I keep my eyes closed half the time I’m in a confessional. Really! I’m not kidding!”
She didn’t answer and kept walking, turning her light slowly to and fro to get a sense of where she was.
“Jiminy Cricket!” the priest said angrily, turning and running back toward the generator.
Goldie smiled to herself, hearing his departing footsteps. “Catholic guilt. It’s the best!”
She continued walking and moving her light around, surprised by the high, solid rock ceiling.
The tunnel she was in went steadily downward at a twenty-degree angle, and the further she went, the less fresh the air became.
She also noticed rails on shorter railroad ties for the push carts that carried ore paralleling her to the right.
“It’s like bein’ in the bat cave,” she observed. “Please let Robert Pattinson pop out from behind a rock.”
She came to an intersection of tunnels that went right and left.
In very faded white paint on one rock wall was the number “4.” The tunnel going in the other direction was labeled “17.” As she studied the numbers, an endless string of interconnected single clear lightbulbs, each about three feet apart, and hanging on the left-hand side wall via a series of metal spikes, came fading up like someone had slowly turned on a rheostat.
Obviously, Father Fitz had figured out how to turn on the generator.
“Let there be light,” she mused, thankfully.
Goldie didn’t know how many strings of lights had been interconnected, but she guessed there were dozens.
The lights on the left-hand wall descended, going straight across the opening of other tunnels, almost as far as she could see.
Then, they seemed to turn abruptly left, illuminating the entrance of another tunnel.
“Goldie?” she heard the muted voice of Father Fitz call. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” she yelled back, clicking off her flashlight. “I’m gonna follow the lights. See where they lead. I might be gone for a few minutes. So, if you don’t hear from me, don’t worry. Okay?”
“You shouldn’t be doing this!” Father called. “But, since you are, be careful!”
Usually, Goldie knew she would never be this brave.
But her being in Sparkledove was anything but normal.
She’d awakened in a different state, in a different time.
She was watching the spirit of someone commit suicide daily, and no one else could see it.
She’d heard people use the lyrics of songs that were decades away from being written.
She figured she had inherited a set of circumstances and a mystery that she was supposed to solve.
And since she was sure of this, she didn’t believe that dying in a mine was going to be her destiny.
She didn’t consider herself brave so much as desperate for answers.
She was further bolstered by the fact that a priest was waiting outside for her.
She went deeper and deeper, descending lower and lower into the mine.
Passing tunnels on either side labeled “7,” “13,” “11,” and “2.” Some were large enough to accommodate a group of miners, while others were smaller and clearly just for push carts.
There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the numbering system.
Maybe it refers to the order in which they were dug, she thought.
Or maybe it had something to do with an overall mapping system.
She finally came to where the lights turned left into yet another tunnel that continued to go down.
It was labeled “22.” At this point, she’d been steadily descending for nearly seven minutes, and the air was getting thinner.
She slipped off her stocking cap and gloves, then stuck them into her pockets.
“I don’t know how much miners make,” she said, looking around. “But whatever it is—it ain’t enough.”
She continued into tunnel “22.” About a minute later, she noticed little trickles of water on the rock walls. Just a couple at first. Then, a few more, and a few more until there was a small puddle of brown water on the tunnel floor.
“Where’s that comin’ from?” she wondered out loud.
About a hundred yards further down, she came to a tunnel to her left labeled “12” where the lights were strung straight across its entrance. Some ten feet beyond that, she came to the first real thing that truly bothered her on this trek.
Straight ahead, she saw that the rock floor of tunnel “22” had partially collapsed.
The tunnel was about nine feet wide, and approximately eight feet of the floor had fallen away, leaving only a foot or so of ledge to her left that continued for a distance of about eleven feet.
More disturbingly, she didn’t know where the floor had fallen to.
“What the hell is this?” she complained. “This ain’t no freakin’ Indiana Jones movie!”
She slowly approached the drop-off to the floor, got out her flashlight, clicked it on, and pointed it down. The beam of light stretched into only darkness.
“Oh, this isn’t good,” she decided.
She saw a small rock by her foot, picked it up, and tossed it into the abyss. After she did, she counted: “One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.” She finally heard the echoing “clack” of rock striking rock at “Seven Mississippi.”
“Oh, shit!” she sighed. “This isn’t good at all!”
Goldie thought about turning around and going back.
But after having come all this way, she still didn’t have any idea where the lights led.
And despite the collapsed floor, the lights were still leading on to somewhere.
Meaning, somebody had gotten safely across and strung them.
So, she stood there for nearly a minute, considering her options.